Air Obama's not-so-friendly skies

The skies haven’t been so friendly on Air Obama after the campaign decided on Thursday to pull the seats for reporters from The Washington Times, New York Post and Dallas Morning News — all papers that endorsed John McCain — after Saturday.

Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki told Politico that the “demand for seats on the plane during this final weekend has far exceeded supply, and because of logistical issues we made the decision not to add a second plane.”

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Both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune had staffers returning to the plane, meaning fewer seats were available. The New York Daily News, another paper that’s been on the plane (and that has endorsed Obama), has a seat now but might lose it on Monday.

Though dozens of other news organizations had put in requests, the campaign decided that there still wouldn’t have been enough outlets to fill 150 seats on a second plane, and that costs would have been prohibitive if only part of a second plane had been filled.

John Solomon, executive editor of The Washington Times, was frustrated by the campaign’s decision to no longer provide a seat to reporter Christina Bellantoni, who has covered the Democratic race since 2007.

"This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth; we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars covering Sen. Obama's campaign, traveling on his plane, and taking our turn in the reporter's pool, only to have our seat given away to someone else in the last days of the campaign," wrote Solomon on The Times website.

Through September, The Washington Times paid $64,634 to the Obama campaign for Bellantoni's travels with it, according to reports filed by the campaigns with the Federal Election Commission. The New York Post and Dallas Morning News spent $50,850 and $27,058, respectively.

In total, media outlets have paid $9.6 million to the Obama campaign to travel with it.

They've spent less than half that amount — $4.4 million — to travel with the McCain campaign, though that difference stems in large part from different travel schedules, overhead costs and billing standards, as well as from the prolonged Democratic primary that dominated media attention for months after the Republican race ended.

Obama's campaign, which some network TV journalists have griped does not cater to them, opened its traveling press corps, or “bubble” — once the rarified turf of the elite media — to a wider range of media outlets.